Friday, May 10, 2013

"No one sees the tears of a clown"

According to the Dec. 5, 1978 FBI memo, Edith Bogue was personal secretary to Reverend Jim Jones, and "Tiena" Bogue, was a member of the Security force, and both were under suspicion by the FBI of culpability in the mass suicides and murders, although as far as the public knew, the Bogue family, who were "defectors" accompanying Congressman Ryan when he was shot, were the "good guys."

Interestingly, even though this article states "Bogue [Juanita] went to Jonestown with her sister, Teena, and parents Jim and Edith Bogue," a third sister, Marilee, "died in Jonestown."

"Another sister was shot at the airport," means, if true, that some casualties from the air strip assault were treated locally and not airlifted to Puerto Rico

However, according to a Google Books Result search return, on page 129 of Mary M, Maaga's book, Hearing the Voice of Jonestown, Maaga writes, "Jim Bogue and his estranged wife, Edith Bogue, left Jonestown with their three children, Tommy, Teena, and Juanita, and Edith's partner, Harold Cordell,"

Perhaps it's Juanita Bogue's diagnosis of "amnesia" that has her recalling her perished sister rather than a brother who survived, although I'd guess its her diagnosis that is faulty---the result of 35 years of entanglement in a web of lies. "Hardat Sukhdeo, a Guyana-born retired psychiatrist," isn't helping matters much.

Nor does Juanita's enmeshment with Odell Rhodes, the primary witness to a brief portion of the supposed suicide-potion ritual, and at one time, the misremembered father to Juanita son, whose destiny is now revealed, help us make sense of what is going on here. That is beyond the power of culture or psychology to explain.

OAKLAND - The 19-year-old accused of killing an Oakland police officer may be a sad legacy of the tragedy of Jonestown, said his mother and a psychiatrist who worked with Peoples Temple survivors.

Juanita Bogue, a Jonestown survivor and the mother of Chad Rhodes, the man accused of killing Oakland police Officer James Williams Jr., said her son was conceived in the Guyana compound where more than 900 Peoples Temple members committed suicide or were murdered 20 years ago.

"Everything around his life has been trauma," Bogue said Tuesday, the day of her son's arraignment on a charge of slaying the officer from a sniper's perch Sunday morning.

"I'm the only one who can help him and I can't help myself," said Bogue, adding that she was unable to even tell her son about his father. "He may go to the electric chair and not even know who he is."

Rhodes is accused of climbing out of a car on an overpass above Interstate 580 just past midnight Sunday morning and fatally shooting Williams - the father of three small children - with an AK-47 assault rifle.

He is charged with murder, in circumstances that could result in the death penalty, and three counts of attempted murder. Execution in California is by lethal injection.

Sitting in the living room of a friend's home Tuesday, Bogue, 42, appeared emotionally fragile as she described her son as a teenager haunted by never knowing who his father was.

Bogue suffers from bouts of amnesia - a result, said a psychiatrist, of the trauma caused by her experiences with the Peoples Temple and the mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana.

Hardat Sukhdeo, a Guyana-born retired psychiatrist who treated Bogue and other Jonestown survivors, said: "I look at this whole effect of Jonestown and the suicides and this boy, this little man, is one of the consequences."

Jonestown was to have been a Utopian dream, free of racism, a haven for justice.

But on Nov. 18, 1978, it became the scene of unspeakable horror as the Rev. Jim Jones led his Bay Area flock into the worst mass murder / suicide in modern history.

U.S. Rep. Leo Ryan, Examiner photographer Greg Robinson, NBC correspondent Don Harris, NBC cameraman Bob Brown and temple defector Patricia Parks were killed in a temple ambush that
preceded the suicides in which Jonestown settlers, most of them children or elderly, drank or were forced to drink cyanide-spiked fruit punch.

Rhodes was given the last name of a man who claimed he conceived the child with Bogue in Guyana, but years later turned out to not be his father.

"I left Guyana with Leo Ryan at the time I was pregnant with Chad," Bogue recalled. "I didn't know I was pregnant. I was suffering from amnesia or something like that. When I was five or six months pregnant I couldn't remember who my son's father was."

After her son was born, Bogue said, another Jonestown survivor, Odell Rhodes, stepped forward to claim paternity.

"Not knowing any difference, I put him on the birth certificate," she said.

But Bogue said Odell Rhodes saw Chad only a couple of times before he was a year old, and not again until he was 5.

And when he returned, he sought and won custody of Chad.

"He comes back into our lives again and gets custody of my son because of my disability, my amnesia," Bogue said. "The judge gives Chad to a man he's seen once or twice before he's 5 years old and he gets a restraining order against me."

A court battle that lasted several months resulted in her regaining custody of Chad, who was about 10 when he learned from his mother that Odell Rhodes wasn't his real father, she said.

Search for his roots

Meanwhile, time and distance from the Jonestown tragedy allowed Bogue to remember things she had blocked out. Among the things she remembered was that a man named Tarik Baker was the real father.
She said he died in Jonestown.

When Chad Rhodes decided in his teens that he wanted to know about his father, Bogue began a frantic search to help discover his roots, she said.

She contacted reporters. She went in search of a death certificate. She looked for photos of Baker or even relatives to help Chad Rhodes connect with his family ties.

The 20-year reunion and the gatherings of survivors and members of families who lost relatives in Jonestown offered high hopes in November, Bogue said.

"I told Chad we'd try again," she said. "I talked to a lot of people but nobody came up with anything. I can't find a death certificate. The mortuary couldn't help. It's a grave with no names. It's like I made up this fictional name to say who his father is."

On the bottle

The disappointment sent her son to the bottle, Bogue said.

"He started drinking heavy the last couple of months" after the Jonestown reunion, she said.

Sukhdeo, a psychiatrist who had worked with cults, described Bogue as a Jonestown survivor "who never really got back into society."

Sukhdeo, who lives in New Jersey, said it was harder for the younger people like Bogue, who escaped Jonestown when she was 21, to make the adjustments back into society.

"She got a job, but she couldn't hold it. She got into bad relationships. She went into protective custody, a battered woman's home. She couldn't ever work or function again. The child, conceived in Guyana but born (in the United States) lived with all of that," he said.

Bogue went to Jonestown with her sister, Teena, and parents Jim and Edith Bogue.

"Her mother and father came out," Sukhdeo said. "But they were separated through another tragedy. One of her sisters (Marilee) was killed in Jonestown. Another sister was shot at the airport. The family came back (to the United States) but they were split up.

"All her friends died. All of the people who meant something to her died. She came back here and her world had fallen apart. We got them out (of Guyana physically) but I don't think we ever got her out. She is a very bright girl but psychologically damaged," Sukhdeo said.

Out of work for years

Bogue last worked in the early 1990s for an accounting firm. Since then, she has been on disability because the psychological problems related to Jonestown, she said.

She has three other children - all boys ages 17, 8 and 3. Chad, who was born premature, suffers from chronic asthma and almost died three times as a result of it, according to Bogue.

"He pulled through each time when the doctors gave up," she said. "He has a will to survive. But he can't follow his own family tree."

Rhodes had some convictions as a juvenile, but those records are not open to the public.

As an adult, he was arrested Dec. 15, 1997, after leading police on a chase through Oakland streets before crashing the car into a curb. He pleaded no contest and was ordered to perform 15 days of community service and put on two years probation.

As a juvenile, he ended up in Dewey High School, an alternative school in Oakland. His mother said he thrived there.

"He won awards in art . . . and competitions he entered," she said. "He was on the honor roll."

Officer's death

On Sunday, just after midnight, police said, Rhodes was with several other people driving over the 38th Avenue overpass when they saw officers - with the emergency lights of their cars flashing - searching along the shoulder of I-580 for a gun that reportedly had been thrown by suspects involved in a chase minutes earlier.

As Williams, two other officers and an evidence technician were taking pictures of where they found the weapon, six to eight shots rang out from the overpass, police said.

Williams was hit by a bullet that ripped through his bulletproof vest. Williams - a father of three just 11 weeks out of the police academy - died shortly before 4 a.m. at Highland Hospital.

Tuesday afternoon, Bogue said: "I can't offer (Chad) a normal life because I can't offer myself a normal life. But he's a good son. He's very protective of me. He pays my bills, gives to the kids. He's kind to the kids in the neighborhood. He goes around and fixes their bikes. He's never been violent."

Bogue said her son was never a happy child.

"He's a deep person. He thinks a lot, writes raps," she said, speaking slightly above a whisper. "He's the quiet type, but he has friends and gets along with people. People say all my kids have beautiful personalities. You know, the life of the party. But it's really - no one sees the tears of a clown."

Bogue said her son has an 18-month-old son and a 3-week-old daughter.

"He loves kids and he's really a good father. Now his children are stuck with the stigma of having somebody's name (Rhodes) that's not even theirs."